Sicily Day 5: Mazara & Selinunte
The scirocco wind blew in from Africa overnight, bringing with it a promise of rain and scudding white clouds. It was a bit cooler today, but with much higher humidity.
We began the day by checking out of our hotel in Mazara, then making a short stop at the Museo del Satiro downtown. Located in an old church, and surrounded by the picturesque ruins of a Baroque Jesuit convent, the small archaeological museum featured a number of ancient Greek and Roman items recovered from shipwrecks, including an extraordinary bronze statue of a young satyr, caught in the middle of whirling in an ecstatic dance.
Sadly, photography was not permitted (and three of the museum staff followed us into the museum's two room to enforce the rule, keeping us all under strict surveillance) but Professor Bob gave a very interesting explanation of how this large statue was created.
(It was cast in pieces using the "lost wax" method, then the pieces soldered together with fine seams, and finally, the whole thing finished with polishing that made the seams disappear, plus marble inlays for the eyes, and copper inlays for the lips and nipples. The statue may have been painted, as well, though any trace of that is long gone after centuries of submersion in the sea.)
Then it was off to our next stop, the ancient limestone quarry of Cusa, set amidst acres of olive groves. This quarry provided the stone for the temples in nearby Selinunte. What was interesting about the quarry was that a number of column drums (the round sections that were eventually stacked to form a complete column) still remain, half-cut from the living stone. It appears that there were projects that ran out of money (or the city that ordered the columns was conquered) and the work was simply abandoned.
Unfortunately, during this short hike over uneven ground, Martin (who, ironically, happens to be a retired doctor) fell and cut his mouth pretty badly.
Giorgetta, our tour manager, tried to convince him to go to an urgent care clinic for stitches (as did Joanne and Bob, the two other retired physicians in our group) but in a case of "physician, heal thyself" Martin resisted the suggestion and asked to be taken to a pharmacy instead, where he rigged together a complicated bandage for his lip using gauze and steri-strips/butterfly bandages.
He missed the first part of our tour around the archaeological park at Selinunte, but was able to rejoin us in time for the short bus ride up the hill to the ancient acropolis (which overlooks the sea) and is crowned with the remaining columns of the Temple of Hercules.
While Giorgetta and Pasquale (our dapper bus driver) took Martin and his wife to a pharmacy, Professor Bob led us on a tour of Selinunte's magnificent temples. They all collapsed as a result of earthquakes at some point in Sicily's history, but were left alone after that and not looted for stone like a lot of other Greek and Roman sites in Europe. Only one temple has been reconstructed, and the rest are strung out along the valley floor in damned impressive piles of rubble, their jumbled columns and huge blocks of stones heaped like abandoned Legos.
When the bus returned, we hopped aboard for a quick ride up the hill to the ancient acropolis. There, we found more collapsed temples, but also the remains of rows of ancient Greek houses (with tiny rooms by Roman standards, and today's standards as well).
We finished off the day's touring by driving five minutes to the modern town, and having a leisurely seafood lunch at a little restaurant located right on the beach. Today's dishes included shellfish-and-shrimp risotto, and pasta with chopped salty ham or bacon, followed by a course of battered and fried swordfish steaks and boiled peel-and-eat shrimp, with a platter of sweet grapes for dessert.
From there, hot, sweaty and tired from several hours' worth of clambering around the ruins, we settled back and enjoyed a 90-minute drive down the coast to Agrigento. The scenery was spectactular: rugged limestone bluffs and hills covered with a green carpet of vineyards, olive groves, fig trees, pomegranate trees weighed down with scarlet fruit, and blooming oleander and hibiscus bushes.
Our first sight of Agrigento in the late afternoon was an interesting mix of the beautiful and the industrial. The outskirts of the city have a lot of farms-turned-B&Bs and holiday houses. Then, as you drive a little further along, a huge oil refinery comes into view, surrounded by lots and lots of tall apartment blocks, with dozens of oil tankers anchored just offshore.
We passed through this part of the city, following the signs for the archaeological park, then turned off onto a dirt road. The bus bumped and swayed, then turned into a large field and parked. Our hotel for the next two nights is a charming old farmhouse-turned-bed-and-breakfast. Built around a very pretty courtyard, with a terraced garden leading down the slope of a hill to an olive grove, it's really pretty.
The rooms are quaint, with tiled floors and antique furniture, with thick stone walls to keep out the heat of the day (though there's an air-conditioner dripping water into the middle of the short hallway leading to the bathroom).
And best of all, the windows of my room look out over the ruins of three ancient Greek temples, located in the archaeological park about 2-3 miles away.
Currently, they're bathed in the soft red-gold light of the setting sun, and I've been propping my camera on the window-sill to take long-exposure photos with my telephoto lens.
In another hour or so, the temples will be illuminated with floodlights, and I'll take another set of photos before heading downstairs to our 8 p.m. dinner.
Tomorrow, we'll begin our day with a visit to the National Museum, which houses the archaeological finds from Agrigento, then we'll be spending the afternoon touring the various temples. (I can see three from my window, and I believe that there are at least five temples, total.)